On Wednesday, August 21st, Mainsoft Corporation, the software porting company, announced the release of Visual MainWin 5. Visual MainWin 5 enables developers to develop enterprise level C++ applications using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and rapidly deploy them to multiple Unix platforms. It actually recompiles Windows source code with the Unix compilers to create native Unix applications. The product, Visual MainWin 5, delivers an unprecedented level of multi-platform performance, security, and scalability for today's enterprise-class applications, while providing a solid XML foundation for building Web services. Visual MainWin 5 supports the vision of interoperable XML Web services based on Microsoft .NET technology. There is also a J2EE Integration Package available for Java programmers.

Developed in close cooperation with Microsoft through the Visual Studio .NET Integration Program (VSIP), Visual MainWin 5 extends the Visual Studio .NET development environment to deploy C++ applications on multiple flavors of Unix and Linux.

At the core of Visual MainWin 5 is significantly enhanced performance, scalability and reliability. To achieve this, Visual MainWin 5 has been designed from the ground up for linear scalability and process isolation, enabling non-stop operation. Validated by around-the-clock testing at throughput rates of over 1,500 transactions-per-second, the new product achieves tremendous linear performance and scalability compared to its rivals. For example, on multi-processor machines, the core Microsoft XML engine in Visual MainWin 5 is 7 times faster than the widely available Apache Xerces XML.